Swiss Police Raid UEFA amid Panama Papers scandal

The headquarters of the European soccer body UEFA have been raided on Wednesday to seize information about a contract signed by Gianni Infantino, which is disclosed in the Panama Papers.

Police seized details of a contract, signed by Gianni Infantino, now head of the global soccer body FIFA, according to a report in the Guardian paper.

Infantino is one of the many people including public figures and political leaders whose names appeared in the 11.5 million released documents, showing these people financial arrangements and ways to hide their money in order to avoid taxes.

The contract in question is signed several years ago when Infantino was still a UEFA official. The deal was with Cross Trading, a company which bought broadcasting rights for UEFA Champions League football for $111,000 in 2006, and then sold them to Ecuadorian TV broadcaster for $311,170.

Cross Trading also paid $28,000 for the rights to the Uefa Super Cup, selling those to Teleamazonas for $126,200, the BBC reports.

The owners of the Cross Trading company are Hugo Jinkis and his son, Mariano, who are currently under home arrest in Argentina as a part of a US investigation into corruption at FIFA.

Infantino gave a statement in which he said that he was ‘dismayed that his integrity was being doubted’’. Nevertheless, UEFA confirmed that police has visited their offices.

“UEFA can confirm that today we received a visit from the office of the Swiss Federal Police acting under a warrant and requesting sight of the contracts between UEFA and Cross Trading/Teleamazonas,” UEFA said in a statement.

Among the other people involved in this scandal are British Prime Minister David Cameron, who gave a field for speculations after he failed to answer whether his family would benefit in the future from their offshore funds. Scandals occurred with the names of Russian President Vladimir Putin, relatives of the leaders of China, Pakistan, and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

The Panama documents may lead Iceland to a political crisis since their Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson stepped down after the documents showed his wife owned an offshore company that held millions of dollars, worth of debt from failed Icelandic banks.

Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Sweden and the Netherlands are among nations that have started inquiries.